The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott LynchGreat fun. I liked the structure, even though the descriptions got a little long (but then again, as I was getting closer to the end of the book it was earlier and earlier in the morning, so that may have been part of my impatience). It was bloody, clever, and entertaining.

The first four books of the Blood series, Tanya HuffTons of fun and exactly what I was looking for in my winter break reading. I'd originally tried to pace myself by only reading 1 a day, but then kind of threw my hands up in the sky and just kept turning pages. That was part of the fun - all four of the books were great page turners. And the great part is the prickly-slightly-older-tough-heroine has a voice that's consistently interesting to listen to, her perspective changes throughout the books as her world view is challenged (and she's surprised by the supernatural, which is kind of lovely), her inability to commit to the men in her life don't stop her from having sex with them (and she doesn't feel guilty about it) and the sex scenes are a graceful fade to black (for those in the know I am of course comparing her to LKH, and trying to do so favorably). AND I loved how she freaks out about having to spend a day with her undead boyfriend while he's asleep, and ... yep, liked 'em. I have two more of her other series that i'll be getting to at some point.

things I've seen (movie wize, that is)

The Day the Earth Stood StillI know, you're probably reading this thinking "I could have told you that was going to suck from the previews!" And you would have been totally right. But it's a sci-fi movie, and I'm willing to give them a chance. And it's a part that Keanu shouldn't have had a problem with - a wooden alien? so suits him. Sadly other than a really cool scene with John Clease as an academic, the rest of the movie pretty much blew monkey chunks in one way or another. Oh, but the alien body-guard was cool.

Le Cirque: A Table in HeavenA really lovely documentary about the family and the restaurant. I'm fascinated by the inner workings, and by the personality of Sirio Maccioni (who else would get to ask Henry Kissinger where he should move his restaurant). It was a little sad though, since it's obvious this kind of dining is either gone or going. It lead us to an interesting discussion of just what 'fine dining' means anymore, and who's going to this kind of restaurant, and how you make food that your regulars will love but still keep people coming in from the cold to eat your food.

OH, and the biggest news is that ALL of my applications for grad school are DONE! I got a call from one of the admissions offices this morning saying they hadn't gotten my printed copy of my writing sample. The upshot of the conversation was that I needed to overnight it to them, and so I finished up the last two statments of purposes and into the mail all three went!

One thing that's really annoyed me about this whole process is the amount of paper I've had to send out. If I submit a writing sample online, I should not then have to resubmit it in hard copy. And it's doubly annoying that some programs have a "Graduate School" that you apply to, but then that place doesn't seem to share information with the *acutal* program (thus I have to send copies to the program as well). Why on earth have an online application if you're going to make me mail it in too? How is that saving anyone time and money since they've got to store the hard copies and the virtual copies somewhere right?

Now that I've got all that out, I'm proceeding with the rest of my friday night quite pleasantly. Happy evening to you all!

I'm a big Tanya Huff fan. (BTW, she is andpuff on LJ, and seems like One Of Us at heart.) If you liked the Blood series, you will LOVE the Smoke series, which are built around Tony and have canon slash. Not only that, but Huff's writing matured a great deal in the intervening years -- she went from good to better -- and it's reflected in her plotting and her antagonists, both of which I found more satisfying in the Smoke books.

And I am crazy nuts about the Valor series, which I just finished devouring last month. I loved those books so much, I bought the most recent one in hardback; I never do that with fiction, but in this case I just couldn't wait. The gender neutral 'verse is incredibly refreshing, and the characters and in particular the various alien races are fascinating. Great stuff if you like SF (as opposed to fantasy).

Right now I'm on book 3 of the Summons series, which is entertaining enough, but less to my personal taste since it's a good deal lighter and more flippant in style. Still fun, though.

The Smoke series are my next two books and I'm totally looking forward to them! And I've read the Summoning series I think (it's about the cats/familiars right?) and it's cute as fluff. It's really good to know that her other stuff is just as fun and that she does good SF too (which i totally like!).

And thanks!! I'm so glad to be done with them! now comes the next few nail biting months when I just have to wait.

Thanks lady! I ended up applying to 6 (which is about average for the AS field from what I'm given to understand). The funny thing was that it seemed like more work than it should have been - i can't imagine doing 10-12 apps like some people (in other fields) did.

i only applied to three programs, which is pretty atypical in philosophy (where 6-10 seems more common), but i wasn't totally certain it was what i wanted to do, so was only comfortable trying those three.